


A Fallen Jedi

by Alexander_Lamington



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Child Death, Gen, Jedi Temple (Star Wars), Order 66, Post-Order 66, Post-Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: Rebels Spoilers, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 02:57:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20539016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexander_Lamington/pseuds/Alexander_Lamington
Summary: I've been wondering what happened to Barriss Offee after she confessed to the bombing, and it bothered me that it hasn't been resolved (yet), so I decided to write a short lil thing about it to tide me over until Dave Filoni tells us what's up.





	1. Chapter 1

Barriss Offee awoke from a nightmare. A hazy vision of violence and death, sounds of blasterfire and the hum of lightsabers, confusion and fear, a raging fire consuming a great, sacred building, an order being obeyed. By the time she had opened her eyes, the memory of the dream had been banished completely from her mind, and she was left with only a sense of disturbed calm. Knowing she would not be able to return to sleep in this state, she sat up on her bed, and as she had done many times every day for as long as she could remember, she began to meditate.

She had been trained since early childhood in the Jedi temple to meditate upon her surroundings, to take them in, to become attuned to the Living Force within everything around her. It occurred to her now that her surroundings were far from ideal. Harsh, unnatural orange lighting illuminated a grey, bare cell, smaller and more sparse even than her Padawan quarters had been. Beyond the force-resistant metallic walls was the detention centre of the Jedi temple, hostile and unwelcoming. She could sense the anxiety of her fellow prisoners, as well as the clone trooper guards stationed around the complex, feeling little but boredom as they made their repetitive rounds through the hallways, itching to return to war, or at least somewhere with some action.

The detention centre was once used to contain Sith and other practitioners of the dark side, and the occasional unruly Padawan. Now, during the Clone Wars, they held important prisoners of war, an assortment of Separatist military leaders awaiting interrogation or trial, assassins, bounty hunters, and spies.

And her.

A traitor. A terrorist. A disgraced Padawan. A fallen Jedi.

* * *

After a harrowing incident in which she was infected by mind-controlling parasites, she had spent her recovery time studying in the temple archives. She had always loved poring over the ancient Jedi texts, seeking the wisdom of the Jedi masters of old. She read of rare and almost-forgotten Force techniques, fascinating mystical artefacts, the history of the Jedi Order, and the prophecies of the Jedi seers.

The more she read of the Jedi Order from history, the more unrecognisable it became from Order she knew. She came to loathe the hypocrisy of the people who preached non-violence, who prided themselves on being keepers of the peace, yet callously sent children and slave soldiers onto the battlefields of a brutal galaxy-wide war they had instigated for their own selfish purposes. The Jedi, through their fanatical pursuit of the destruction of the Sith, had themselves turned to darkness.

One prophecy in particular had plagued her mind since she had read it: “only through the sacrifice of many Jedi will the Order cleanse the sin done to the nameless.” This prophecy began to consume her thoughts. It had a familiarity to it that she couldn’t quite explain, as if she had come to understand it once in a dream she could no longer recall.

Although her memories of what had happened on the ship headed to Dantooine were hazy and distant, she knew she had briefly shared a hivemind with several clone troopers. In the time since the incident, she had grown more and more enraged on their behalf about their treatment by the Republic and the Jedi Order. She became convinced that the prophecy referred to these men, designated only by number until they named themselves, created to fight in a war in which they had no stake, given no choice but to serve, and thought of as little more than droids of flesh and bone by most in the Republic. And for the Jedi to atone for their transgressions against the clones, there had to be sacrifice.

So she had sought out anti-war groups on Coruscant, people who agreed with her opposition to what the Order had become. She had arranged for a bombing of the temple, her co-conspirator had tried to betray her, she had framed her fellow Padawan and former friend, and she had been caught.

The Jedi Council had chosen not to remove her from the Order until a guilty verdict was reached, stating that their expulsion of Ahsoka Tano had been a mistake. She had been begrudgingly impressed by that. As a Padawan of the Jedi Order, she was still a Commander in the Grand Army of the Republic, and as such she had been tried in a military tribunal. She had admitted to the bombing of the Jedi temple hanger and the framing of Ahsoka, and been sentenced to death. Shortly before her sentence was due to be carried out, she was told that two senators named Amidala and Organa had successfully petitioned for her death sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment, arguing against the execution of someone so young. She had been dully surprised to hear that she had been defended by two senators she had never met, especially one who had supposedly been close friends with Ahsoka.

Barriss had not requested a visit from Luminara Unduli. She did not want to see her. She did not want to listen to Master Unduli lecture her on how disappointed she was, how she had taught her better than this, about the dangers of the dark side. Barriss spent months anticipating a cold condemnation, made all the more painful due to the utter lack of emotion, lack of acknowledgement of the years they had spent together, fighting side by side. There had never been any affection between them as there seemed to be between other Masters and their Padawans, but even so, Barriss had felt certain that she would have been compelled by duty to visit her former Padawan without being asked. Regardless of how much she couldn’t stand the thought of facing her, Unduli's absence had been ubiquitous, and it stung all the more the longer it had continued.

In fact, in the several months she had been imprisoned, Barriss had only been visited twice. Anakin had begun his visit with a long, silent scowl. Barriss chose to remain quiet too, taking the time to reach out to him with the Force. She was taken aback by his dark, simmering anger. The Jedi believed Barriss had been corrupted by the dark side. Perhaps she was not the only one they should be worried about.

Finally, Anakin spoke.

“Has anyone told you what happened to Ahsoka?”

“No.”

“She’s gone.”

Barriss’s eyes widened momentarily in shock.

“She died?”

“No. She’s gone from the Order.”

“Why would they refuse to take her back? She was cleared of all charges.”

“She refused. She left.”

If not for the fury still radiating from Anakin, Barriss might have smiled. She was pleased that Ahsoka had discovered the dark side of the Order, even though it was far later than she had hoped. She would have made a valuable asset to her cause.

“For what it’s worth, I would have been sorry to see her executed.”

Anakin’s anger surged, bubbling to the surface.

“It’s worth nothing,” he snarled. He collected himself, and when he spoke again he appeared calmer, but Barriss could sense that his anger had not subsided.

“I don’t know why I came,” he said, before turning and stalking out, leaving her alone in her cell.

She really had cared about Ahsoka. Framing her had not been part of the original plan. Letta Turmond had tried to betray her, and had asked to speak to the one Jedi who might have sympathised, a Jedi who Barriss had once mentioned to her as a possible ally. She had been forced to kill Letta to protect herself, and in doing so, had placed suspicion on Ahsoka. She had felt bad about exploiting that suspicion and framing her, just as she had felt bad about the deaths of the clone troopers and her friend Tutso Mara, caught in the bomb’s blast. But she did not regret her actions. The Jedi had to be stopped. People needed to understand. The Jedi were descending into darkness, the Republic was on its way to destruction. And only through the sacrifice of many Jedi could the Order cleanse the sin done to the nameless.

A week later, she was visited by one of Senator Amidala’s handmaidens, a young woman in a deep blue robe, with a hood pulled up over her brown hair, partially obscuring her face with shadow. She had introduced herself as Dormé and was accompanied by a scowling guard with a patch over his left eye. Barriss sensed his tension and his discomfort with the idea of the handmaiden visiting her.

“Senator Amidala wishes to help you,” Dormé began, “she has spoken to other Jedi. They say many throughout history have fallen to the dark side and then returned. She is optimistic that if you are able to be brought back to the light, she can appeal the ruling on the grounds that you were under the influence of the dark side at the time of your crimes. You may be released and allowed back into the Jedi Order.”

“I have no interest in returning to the Order, and I desire no help from a Republic senator,” Barriss replied coolly, “I have no business with slavers and warmongers.”

Dormé paused.

“The Senator is working on several bills to make the Republic more proactive in the eradication of slavery galaxy-wide.”

A flash of rage brought Barriss to her feet.

“While fighting with an army of-”

“-She recognises that,” Dormé interrupted, as she calmly and surprisingly authoritatively gestured to the guard to put away his weapon, which he had drawn the moment Barriss had moved. “Which is why she is also working on bills advancing the rights of the clones. Providing them with citizenship, means of self-determination, a future after the war. Believe me, Senator Amidala understands your cause. She believes much of what you believe. There are non-violent ways to achieve your goals.”

“Senator Amidala is naïve if she thinks the Senate will pass any of her bills. If she thinks any of it will make a difference.”

“Perhaps. But she has some experience passing seemingly impossible bills through the Senate.”

Barriss had dismissed the handmaiden. There was no point in arguing. This woman had placed her faith in a senator whose intentions may have been pure, but who had no way of effecting real change. The Republic was rotten from its very core, and no amount of good intentions from idealistic senators would change that.

* * *

As she meditated in her cell, her stomach dropped as she suddenly became aware of a disturbance in the Force, more significant than she had ever felt before. She sensed violence and death. Reaching out with the Force she heard the sounds of blasterfire and the hum of lightsabers, felt the confusion and fear of Jedi felled suddenly and without warning. And somehow it all felt so familiar.


	2. Chapter 2

Barriss felt the violence grow nearer, her heart pounding as it seemed to descend upon the temple like a storm cloud. Though she could not hear nor see anything beyond her cell, she felt the deaths of the Jedi around her as if she was watching the horror unfold right in front of her. Hundreds of Jedi were being massacred, cut down where they stood. She felt their confusion, their fear, their pain.

“Only through the sacrifice of many Jedi will the Order cleanse the sin done to the nameless,” she reminded herself aloud.

This had to be what the prophecy spoke of. This would cleanse the sins of the Jedi. This was a good thing. This was what Barriss had wanted. This meant she had been right all along.

She sensed a deep flash of terror and could not stand to feel the deaths of her former allies and friends any longer. She shut it out, closing her mind to it all, but not before she thought she heard the screams of frightened children. Her emotions overcame her. Tears welled in her eyes, her throat tightened. She tried to focus on staying calm and wrapped her shaking hands around her shoulders, waiting helplessly for it to pass.

Barriss reasoned that the Separatists must have finally found a way to invade Coruscant and storm the temple. She wondered whether the Separatists would release her if they took control of the temple. After all, as a former Jedi she was no longer their enemy. She also bleakly considered the possibility that they would not even check the cells, and she would simply be left to die.

She did not know how much time had passed. She was jolted out of her thoughts when she became aware of marching footsteps, getting louder and louder. Her cell door opened, and a figure in a black hood stepped in, flanked by two clone troopers. The Separatists must have fallen, and the prisoners were of course to be transferred to a more secure facility while the temple recovered. When she stood to meet the man in front of her, she was confronted with the scowling face of Anakin Skywalker. She wondered why he had been sent to escort her. Surely he was too important for something so trivial. He nodded to one of the clones, who placed a pair of shackles on her wrists, and led her out of the cell. She was led through the corridors of the detention centre, too perplexed to say anything. Anakin matched her silence, stalking ahead of her with a cold, dark determination. When they reached the entrance to the detention centre, Barriss lurched to a stop and leant her shoulder on the doorway, her knees buckling.

The wide corridor before her was littered with bodies. Lifeless Jedi and clone troopers lay scattered across the floor. No one was checking for injured survivors. No one was taking the bodies away to be laid to rest. Barriss couldn’t understand how this had happened. Not a single battle droid lay amongst the carnage, so who had killed these people? Burn marks on robes and armour showed where Jedi had been shot with blaster bolts and, jarringly, where clones, and even some Jedi, had been struck with the blades of lightsabers. Something was very wrong here.

“Keep moving,” ordered a clone from behind her.

“What happened here?” she asked, her voice betraying her horror.

His only response was to shove her forward, and so forward she stumbled, weaving between the dead to follow a seemingly unfazed Anakin Skywalker, wherever he was taking her.

Every corridor she turned into was more of the same: dead Jedi, dead clones, some living clones sweeping the area. As they made their way across the vast entrance hall towards the main doors, Barriss was startled by a shout, and turned in time to see a flash of green light as a young Mon Calamari girl, likely a Padawan, ignited her lightsaber and felled the clone who had apparently discovered her hidden in the shadows behind one of the great pillars lining the hall. She made a break for the entrance, deflecting blaster bolts as she sprinted for the doors. Without hesitation, Anakin strode to meet her, lightsaber in hand. She was forced back a step as she blocked his blade but recovered enough to retaliate with a desperate swing of her own. He knocked it aside easily, leaving her vulnerable to his slash across her chest. She crumpled, the life leaving her before she hit the ground, her lifeless face betraying the terror she had experienced in her final moments. Anakin stepped over her body towards another cloaked man. When he reached the mysterious man, Anakin kneeled before him and bowed his head. Still reeling from what she had seen, Barriss was ushered onwards before she could see the other man’s face, or hear what was said.

Once outside, she was led to a ship, and as she walked numbly up the boarding ramp she heard one of her guards give the pilot his orders.

“This one’s going to the prison on Stygeon Prime.”


	3. Chapter 3

Though the brief conversations Barriss managed with her fellow prisoners in the months following her transfer, she came to understand that Count Dooku had been killed, and the war had ended shortly afterwards. The Jedi had tried to gain power, attacking the Chancellor Palpatine, and the Order had been forcefully disbanded. Palpatine now ruled over the former Republic as the Emperor. This prison, known as the Spire, was once a Separatist facility, but now contained the enemies of the newly formed Empire. She occasionally asked after Anakin, mystified about his role in the dismantling of the Order, but the prisoners who had heard of him only knew of rumours that he had died at the end of the war. The events surrounding the conclusion of the Clone Wars, the fall of the Jedi and the Republic, and the rise of the Empire seemed to be shrouded in mystery.

Barriss had begun to settle into the monotonous routine of the Spire. She spoke little, resigning herself to the fact that no one here had any information of use. She kept to herself during meals, and spent much of her time in her solitary cell meditating. It was as she was exiting her cell for mealtime one evening that she noticed a prisoner she recognised at the door of the cell adjacent to hers. She looked starkly different in her orange prison jumpsuit and grey head-cover, identical the one Barriss wore. She was thinner, more haggard, than when she had last seen her, but stood with the same serene confidence she had once admired. Luminara Unduli locked eyes with Barriss, who held her gaze for a moment, then looked away, turning to be escorted with the other prisoners down the hallway. Luminara, walking behind her, said nothing. They carried on this way for weeks, with Barriss ignoring her former master. She did not want to speak to her, she did not want to hear what she had to say, or be forced to explain herself. Luminara was not her master anymore.

One morning, as Barriss sat alone at the end of a long table picking at her food, Luminara sat down opposite her, and began quietly eating her meal. Barriss stared downwards, avoiding eye contact, waiting for her to speak. The silence stretched on, Barriss growing more and more tense with each passing moment, until she finally looked at Luminara.

“Do you have something to say?” Barriss challenged, her voice harsher than she had expected it to be.

Luminara’s piercing blue eyes studied her.

“Do you?” she asked, finally.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“And I don’t expect you to.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want to offer my apologies.”

Barriss frowned, taken aback.

“I was your master,” Luminara continued. “You were my responsibility and I failed you. I was always so formal with you, and you must have felt unable to talk to me about your feelings towards the Jedi Order. If you had been able to turn to me for support, you may never have done what you did. I can only hope that you can forgive my failings as your master.”

For a moment, Barriss felt a wave of relief, comforted in knowing that Master Unduli did not see her as a disappointment, and genuinely cared for her. But Barriss’s small smile departed as quickly as it had begun, and her face hardened as her anger suddenly returned.

“I was not some lost child in need of counsel,” she snapped. “The Jedi were consumed by darkness, and I was the only one who could see it. Some kind words could never change that. And don’t pretend you care. You never once came to visit while I was imprisoned in the temple.”

Luminara looked sadly at Barriss.

“You never asked to see me. I tried to respect your boundaries, to give you space. It is clear that the dark side has clouded your mind, Padawan-“

“-I am not your Padawan.”

Barriss stood and carried her tray to a table far from Luminara, turning briefly to see her bow her head, her shoulders sagging, the remnants of her confident demeanour fading away.

Laying on her bunk, Barriss heard the door to the cell beside hers open and close. She stood and crossed to the wall of her cell. She pressed an ear against the cold metal, focussing on the muffled voices coming from Luminara’s cell, trying to make out individual words. She could distinguish two voices: Luminara’s and a man’s voice she did not recognise. After a few moments, she heard the sound of a blaster being fired once. The door opened, then closed, and the cell fell silent. The tightening in her chest she had felt in the temple returned, and Barriss slid to the floor, breathing steadily to try and calm herself. Luminara was dead. Luminara was a Jedi, and she had to die. Only through the sacrifice of many Jedi could the Order cleanse their sins.


End file.
